Berducedo

The etymon combines two transparent elements. The Latin adjective viridis, 'green', derived from the verb virere ('to be lush, to sprout, to turn green again'), is one of the basic terms of the Roman colour lexicon and was applied both to the colour and to the vital state of plants in full growth. The suffix -etum, already familiar in other peninsular toponyms (pinetum, 'pine grove'; quercetum, 'oak grove'; olivetum, 'olive grove'), denotes aggregate or abundance. The formula viridetum / virductum thus points to a place characterised by its permanent greenness: a high-pasture meadow, a riverside flat, a cool grass-covered slope. Asturian phonetic evolution turned the initial v- into b- (a typical feature of bable and northern Castilian) and simplified the intermediate cluster. The toponym describes the landscape of the place with precision: a plateau at about eight hundred metres in altitude, on the watershed between the Narcea valley and the Allande depression, where the mountain pasture remains green most of the year because of Atlantic humidity. The location also explains its Jacobean function: it was the last stop before the dreaded Palo pass and the ruinous hospitales where the old pilgrims slept at eleven hundred metres, already in the heart of the mountain range.